William Matthew Byrne Jr., 75, Pentagon Papers Judge

U.s. Jurist Ended Daniel Ellsberg's Trial During The Nixon Years.

January 16, 2006|By Elaine Woo Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr., a leading jurist best known for his role in ending the trial of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg after disclosing government misconduct in the case, died of pulmonary fibrosis Thursday at his Los Angeles home. He was 75.

He became the youngest judge ever appointed to the federal bench when he was confirmed in 1971 at age 40.

A member of a prominent legal family, he served from 1994 to 1998 as the central district's chief judge, a post once held by his father.

He was known as a formidable settlement judge, whose skill at resolving disputes depended as much on his personal charm as on his legal savvy.

He also traveled around the world to lecture in countries with struggling legal systems, from nations in South America to the former Soviet Union.

Born in East Los Angeles on Sept. 30, 1930, Judge Byrne attended the University of Southern California, where he earned his bachelor's and law degrees in 1953 and 1956, respectively.

His father, William M. Byrne, had been a prizefighter, union organizer and state legislator before joining the federal bench in 1951.

He served as a judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force from 1956 to 1958 before becoming a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

He spent several years in private practice as a civil litigator before President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him U.S. attorney in Los Angeles in 1967.

By 1969 his office had a 96 percent success rate in criminal prosecutions, the highest in the country.

President Richard Nixon later named him to head the Commission on Campus Unrest, which issued a report in 1971 that examined the factors behind the explosive student protests of the Vietnam War era. Nixon subsequently appointed Judge Byrne to the federal court.

During more than 30 years on the bench, Judge Byrne handled a number of high-profile cases, but he was best known for a case that landed in his courtroom barely two years after he arrived on the federal bench: the Pentagon Papers case in 1973.

Ellsberg was the former defense analyst whose unauthorized release of a top-secret history of the Vietnam War set off First Amendment court battles and ultimately doomed the Nixon presidency.

After large portions of the so-called Pentagon Papers were published in The New York Times and other newspapers, Ellsberg was indicted on 12 federal counts, including conspiracy, theft of government property and espionage.

A clandestine White House unit led by G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt broke into the Beverly Hills offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg's psychiatrist, on Sept. 3, 1971.

They found nothing useful and were not apprehended until after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., nine months later.

In the midst of Ellsberg's trial, the case took a number of bizarre twists.

The first, on April 26, came in the form of a disclosure by the government prosecutor that White House operatives had burglarized Fielding's office.

That night, Nixon's two top lieutenants -- John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman -- resigned, along with acting attorney general Richard Kleindienst. White House counsel John Dean was fired.

A few days later, another disturbing revelation came from the judge himself. He disclosed in court that he had had two recent contacts with Ehrlichman, who had offered him a job -- director of the FBI.

The trial was shaken again on May 9 when Judge Byrne learned of yet another impropriety: The FBI had secretly taped telephone conversations between Ellsberg and Morton Halperin, who had supervised the Pentagon Papers study.

When the government claimed it had lost all relevant records of the wiretapping, Judge Byrne declared a mistrial on May 11, 1973.

"The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice," Judge Byrne told the court that day. "The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

The courtroom erupted in cheers and applause as Ellsberg was freed.

Although Ehrlichman later testified before the Senate Watergate Committee that Judge Byrne had expressed interest in the FBI job, Judge Byrne insisted that he had told the Nixon aide he could not discuss any job offer while the Ellsberg trial was under way.